The biggest I cover, of course, is Mental Health Awareness Week from the Mental Health Foundation, which falls in May.
But there’s so many more you could cover, and you can choose how many you want to get involved with.
I love getting involved and covering these events. I like using my platform to spread awareness of the events that are happening from myself as well as rounding up the best blogs of others.
But how do you cover these events? How do you plan, and how do you make it a success? Well – here are my best tips.
See if the organiser is willing to work with you
Contact whoever is behind the event (if possible) and ask if they’ll collaborate. For smaller awareness days, you might be able to work on it directly. However, for larger, more organised events such as (MHAW) they may instead refer you to their pre-made resources page you can use.
Start with what’s already available
Have a look at the resources that are already out there. Some weeks will have a theme – the specific subject they want to focus on. You might want to stick with that as it’ll help you have something to focus on and link back to the resources created by the organiser.
But feel free to put your own take on it. If you don’t feel comfortable talking about the topic, use the event to raise awareness for something you feel passionate about (providing it’s related to the week).
Start planning early
Mental health events are often scheduled months in advance and regularly repeat throughout the year. Time to Change produces a list every year of the significant mental health events taking place.
If you start early, it won’t be so much of a worry if something comes up and you can’t get around to writing. I always like going a few weeks before and then editing my posts to keep them current a couple of days before I post.
When you’ve worked out how much you want to cover the event and have your primary content written, look around to see what content the organisers are producing.
The Mental Health Foundation produced a body image report for the week – they advertised it was coming before, so I made sure to make a special blog post covering it when it came out. You won’t be able to write everything before the event – but get as much as you can
Then talk on social media
These events get attention on social, so if you have a social media account(s) for your blog, you might want to get involved there too. A lot of awareness activities happen on social, which makes it a great opportunity to engage.
On social, you want to be engaging and connecting with what others are doing to mark the occasion as well. It’s always worth networking and talking to those who are supporting the event as well.
Do things evenly
If you write more than one blog post, then don’t share them all at the same time first. Try and distribute your content, so you’re posting something at the start of the week and then maybe your second blog in the middle.
It depends on how many you’ve written, but the schedule allows people to read the first blog and provides more new content from you as the week goes on.
It’s ok to break this rule at the start when you’re trying to build attention for what you’re doing – but make sure you’ve got enough content to last you evenly through.
Don’t do too much
If you’re covering something big like mental health awareness week, then it can be exhausting. There are so many things to keep an eye on, and you may want to write pages and pages of content covering every single area.
Don’t do this
Don’t just write content because it’s a mental health event. Write content because you care, and your readers will care too.
For me, unless it’s mental health awareness week, I like to write one blog post saying what the event means to me and sharing my thoughts and telling people how they get involved. I then finish the event with a roundup posting showing all the amazing people who’ve helped out that week.
So that’s two blog posts – I write one before in advance, and I build the second one as I go through and publish it at the end. This makes things stress free and helps stop the roundup from becoming a massive search for content.
The most important thing to remember when covering mental health awareness events is to enjoy them. These events are a great way of meeting other bloggers and getting involved in the community.
Don’t let it become a lot of work and the stress build-up. Have fun with being able to share your story and use the event to get awareness and express yourself.